The End Of Cash, The Rise Of Crypto And The Future Of Payments

Payments evolve. Consumers adjust and quickly. We are in a growth window that should and will open up new opportunities over the next five years. Before any of our modern systems, there was the gold standard, where all money produced was backed by an equivalent amount of gold in our federal reserves. As a fun bit of history, most people refer to 1971 as the time The United States left that system. Actually, it was FDR, backed by Congress in 1933, that created a joint resolution where creditors could no longer demand payment in gold. Nixon’s move in 1971 simply stopped allowing foreign governments to trade dollars for gold in our federal reserves. Nixon was literally trying to secure the bag. Today, the bag is being replaced by a chain—the blockchain. 

Ian Gertler– blockchain industry thought leader and founder of Symplegades–shared his perspectives. “Change is constant, even though many are apprehensive. Most value convenience and speed. Today, financial services extend beyond the economics of supply and demand, where security and trust reinforce a world of human connection (facilitated by technology rather than being replaced by it).”  Gertler notes that this progression of financial services goes beyond money alone. He passionately stresses that it is quickly becoming the foundation of identity management, trust and authentication. This ongoing convergence of physical and digital presence and environments (think multiple metaverses) will touch all areas of life across the world (banks, healthcare, government, retailers, schools, individuals and communities).

In The Beginning, There Was Cash (And Credit)

Cash has long been on the decline with one UK study citing that cash transactions have decreased nearly thirty five percent at the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the wire transfer has been around since 1872 but you can argue the credit card, now easily accepted as a part of everyday life, was the first modern leap of faith in payments, debuting in 1950. At its onset, the idea of paying for something instantly with the promise that you pay back a third-party institution within the month, rather than right away, probably seemed even more foreign than cryptocurrency does now.

 The Rise of  Digital Payments

 The initial desire to make purchases online necessitated PayPal, mostly to meet the new demand for secure transactions of online auction sites like eBay (which acquired PayPal in 2004). This grew larger even if online retail did not grow as fast as some expected over the decade. Square, CashApp, and Venmo all also were born later out of necessity. People started using less cash and it created a gap where some small merchants weren’t properly equipped to take cards. There would be many situations like wanting to pay a contractor, going to a high school football game where preferred payment methods didn’t match what was being accepted. Large POS systems were cost prohibitive for SMBs and certain operations were too mobile to have them. Square jumped into that space, allowing any small contractor to easily accept payments and signatures on their phone. 

 Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, jumped into the other, interpersonal gap, in payments over the past five years. If people aren’t carrying cash, they need to quickly and easily trade money, pay for their part of the pizza, and more. These offerings are already expanding into a middle space where PayPal and them compete now when it comes to online purchases. Expect more of that convergence. 

Payments Latest Players: Crypto and the De-centralized Blockchain

The Lakers will now play at the Crypto dot com Center, formerly Staples Center. Money is flowing into crypto. Some will argue that the initial purpose of a decentralized blockchain was to level the playing field between banks, governments, and the general public after the housing crisis and Occupy Wall Street. For those that use it regularly, it is the ultimate, unbiased, trust-based system. Each transaction is built upon a ledger that is checked and double-checked by thousands globally to verify the authenticity of a transaction.

Perhaps an apt comparison to cryptocurrency is electric vehicles. We’ve had the technology since the 1980s to produce a quality electric vehicle but didn’t have the industry appetite to change the system or infrastructure. Companies were making money, people were buying cars, hence no change was demanded. Tesla disrupted just enough, sales of new gas-powered vehicles dipped just enough and car companies knew a change was necessary to gain market share in a new category or become Blockbuster. Giants like Ford, GM, Volkswagen, and others almost exclusively advertise their new and upcoming fleet of electric vehicles.

There may need to be a similar event for cryptocurrency. Right now, built off the massive success of pandemic Robinhood traders, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency are functioning as a stock. People are making or losing money on its fluctuation but it can’t be used easily across retailers or online. Someone walking into a Walmart or buying something at Banana Republic isn’t using it, yet. It’s coming. It’s inevitable, just like electric vehicles.  

The Future of Payments

Where we are still most inefficient is B2B sectors and legacy industries. While the general consumer has Venmo, can pay for things quickly, and has a multitude of methods, other industries have been slower to adapt. This is common in B2B. It’s why companies like Salesforce, Adobe, Slack, and others were able to have so much success in the 2010s by creating faster offerings in CRM, CXM and workplace communications for businesses that kept pace with consumer advancements.

We are already seeing this same pattern in payments. MeridianLink, which creates digital lending solutions, went public in July valued at over $2 billion. They partnered with podcast host and financial expert Jim Marous to produce the Future of Digital Lending Report that shows just how rapid the adoption of digital payments and offerings has been post-pandemic in lending.

One of the world’s largest companies, $64 billion fintech giant FIS, has been using its resources to create a bundled future of payments. They created their own real-time payments network, RealNet, which in layman's terms helps B2B transactions happen instantly and not in 30, 60 or however many days. They created a B2C shopping cart solution, GoCart that eliminates redirects, pins, and passwords so retailers will have fewer abandoned shopping carts. That kind of current friction usually accounts for half of abandoned online carts and lost retail revenue.

Their CEO Gary Norcross is following a similar path like Adobe and Salesforce where they are bundling services for banks and retailers that puts everything B2B, B2C, and beyond into one enterprise solution for all things payments. In their earnings call last month, an interaction between FIS and JPMorgan Chase made the growth of fintech as a whole apparent. Norcross was asked about a shift from point solutions to bundles and said, 

 “...we now have completely completed our transition to the cloud. So we've made that migration, and we're getting all the benefits of the cloud platforms that are available. We leaned in with next-generation application stacks, and we talked a lot about that through componentization, whether it's Modern Banking Platform, whether it's Payments One, whether it's Digital One, whether it's NAP, the list goes on and on. So now the next phase is how do you bring that together and weave that together to a one-stop place for innovators, large conglomerates, anybody looking to take advantage of various capabilities in the open market, and we see it as a huge opportunity.” 

But the really interesting byproduct of something like RealNet is a potential use case. Most gig economy workers do not get paid instantaneously. Your Uber or Grubhub driver is most likely being paid weekly. With something like RealNet, payroll could instantly change. For a culture that is already used to transferring money instantly via Venmo and other channels, we haven’t thought to fundamentally challenge that being paid daily or after every job could really help people living paycheck to paycheck have less stress and create more convenience. The multitude of things being created right now in fintech could lead to more growth, change, and convenience than in any period since 1950. 

It won’t be perfect in the short term. You still might know one person that only uses CashApp and you use Venmo. Your WiFi might crash when you are being redirected to PayPal to pay for something. Payroll still isn’t vastly different than it was in the 1970s with a direct deposit but know that the next big change probably won’t be using Bitcoin at McDonald’s (although that would be fun) but more likely it will be in making sure payments are seamless and without friction whether it’s B2B or B2C. Look forward to a not too distant future where everything payments, even the really hard ones right now, function like an Amazon Buy Now button — without a second thought and instantaneously.

Web 3.0 And The Metaverse Will Mainstream—That Might Not Be A Good Thing

Source

There’s a scene in the 2018 Sci-Fi Thriller Upgrade that depicts a number of people in an abandoned warehouse, hooked up to VR headsets and IV drips simultaneously who are engrossed in their virtual worlds and completely checked out of the physical world. The stark images depict VR, “addicts”, languishing in a futuristic Opium den where people stay plugged into virtual worlds of their making for days at a time—blissfully tuned out and fully immersed and dependent on their artificial existence. It is perhaps one of the darkest illustrations of what may come when the “metaverse” becomes mainstream—but it may not be that far from reality. 

Prior to Facebook’s re-brand as “Meta”—their new name for the corporate entity that runs Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR, and others—society has already spent years dealing with the side effects that come with the incredible innovations from social media and mobile apps. Instagram’s own research recently affirmed that its platform is making body image issues worse for one out of three girls already struggling with how they perceive their bodies. And this is just the tip of the Iceberg. Social media combined with the rise of mobile app mainstreaming and rising data speeds and availability have literally transformed the internet as well as our digital behaviors—so much so that companies like Apple, who realize that they too have a significant role to play in the societal downsides of technology have built self-regulating features like screen time monitoring which tells us how many hours we are logging onto our screens or warnings if we are listening to our volume on Apple headsets too loud, for too long. The tech companies of today who are poised to take us into Web 3.0 and the metaverse tomorrow, are trying to self-regulate before they are regulated—an inevitable reality as the power of big tech has grown exponentially.

What is Web 3.0 and The Metaverse? 

An inconvenient truth is that nobody really agrees on what exactly Web 3.0 and the metaverse are specifically—and that’s because it’s still early days and being actively defined. Decentralized cryptocurrencies which are disrupting finance play a role as does the Blockchain technologies upon which they are built. The NFT (Non-Fungible Token) economy also plays into it—directly linked to the world of crypto and assigning ownership to digital assets which can be easily copied but now, thanks to the Blockchain—formal ownership can be documented. As a convenient resource on the niche of NFTs, Expensivity has a useful infographic that breaks down the entire NFT market and what to look for. 

More broadly speaking, analyst Jeremiah Owyang describes Web 3.0 as a shift of power to the people, “the people are in charge of their data, identity, and monetization”. Owyang’s definition captures much of what is happening in a Web 3.0 world as, for example, influencers who built huge audiences on platforms such as YouTube have also become beholden and reliant on these platforms in order to make money off them. Cathy Hackl, an early adopter and well-known “Godmother of the metaverse” defines it as many things and specifically, “a shared virtual space where people are represented by digital avatars (think Ready Player One).” She describes the metaverse in an ever-changing state… “The virtual world constantly grows and evolves based on the decisions and actions of the society within it. Eventually, people will be able to enter the metaverse, completely virtually (i.e. with virtual reality) or interact with parts of it in their physical space with the help of augmented and mixed reality.”

What Owyang and Hackl share in their analysis and vision for both Web 3.0 and the metaverse are the positive possibilities, and they are indeed great. However, our current digital realities which include the likes of internet addiction, hate speech, political subversion, and even the incitement of violence were also born during the heady years of the “Web 2.0” revolution—something I experience first hand and lived in close proximity to. 

Lessons From “Web 2.0”

Much like Web 3.0 and the metaverse, ”Web 2.0” over a decade ago promised a utopian and egalitarian vision of the internet where people would be directly empowered, directly connected and the world would become transformed. Indeed—it has transformed and much for the better—we can now connect to family and friends and see their faces without paying massive fees. We’ve discovered people with similar interests from all over the world and in the past fifteen to twenty years, we’ve seen the explosion of social networks, the evolution of work from e-mail to collaboration platforms, and remote work possibilities. Likewise, we’ve experienced many negative aspects that evolved from the Web 2.0 revolution and these negative aspects have a significant societal impact for the worse.

Misinformation spreads across social networks like wildfire, international bad actors have mastered the art of stirring up dissent, our children are faced with cyberbullying and those who don’t develop discipline when it comes to screen time can inflame all sorts of mental health issues. Some critics of modern social technologies label it as the big tobacco of our time—and indeed what promised to be a net benefit for humanity, equally contains threats and power imbalances that we did not predict. The evangelists of Web 3.0 and the metaverse would be wise to look back to the early years of the last digital revolution as they too were disruptive, idealistic and in some cases utopian—and that’s not exactly how it all worked out. And that’s the takeaway this author would humbly suggest you ponder. As someone who has directly benefited from the rise of social media and Web 2.0 and studied the birth, evolution, and current power dynamics that are now playing out—I would caution anyone who is willing to listen to ignore the lessons of the last digital revolution.

There will be winners and there will be losers. Society is already grappling with a pace of change that technology advances upon our human brains which struggle to process. Sure, there will be people who make the case that the metaverse is safer in many ways than the real world. For example, there were no fatalities when Travis Scott hosted a metaverse event in the virtual world of Fortnite. But as we’ve seen in places like Myanmar, Ethiopia, and in the hearts and minds of both adolescents and adults—what happens in the metaverse, doesn’t always stay in the metaverse.

Our Great Migration: See You In San Antonio

We’re joining the ranks of people uprooting their lives to join in “The Great Migration”, relocating from Chicago to San Antonio. Let’s take a step back and break this down: 

Why Re-Locate?

Prior to the pandemic, I enjoyed a secure life of fiscal/career stability, working as a well-compensated executive at one of the world’s most recognizable and prominent communications/marketing firms. That all changed in an instant, and like many who transition from stability into the unknown, especially with a global pandemic in the backdrop—you begin to evaluate what’s really important in your life. For me it’s about my immediate family, quality of life, proximity to friends, and the ability and flexibility to work with others based not solely on a fiscal compensation model, but an alignment of purpose, compatibility, and mutual respect. 

Why San Antonio?

I’ve always had a love of Austin and the many relationships I’ve cultivated there over the years and I’m interested in dialing those up even more—but I’m less interested in being right in the middle of the Austin growth explosion and white-hot real estate market. For me, San Antonio represents an underrated city that’s only going to get more connected to Austin’s momentum as a technology hub. It’s one that mixes culture with a blue-collar work ethic that reminds me of my upbringing. The people there have this unique grounded quality to them that resonates with me. My instincts tell me that this is an untapped urban center whose full potential remains unknown. As I speak, the corridor between San Antonio and Austin is attracting a migration of people from all over the country. The Austin/San Antonio of today will look different from that of tomorrow. I’d like to be a part of this. 

What About Chicago?

The city of big shoulders has been very good to me. I came to it from New York in my mid-20s and joined the Chicago Tribune during the early years of the Internet. Chicagoland taught me to appreciate the humble but hard-working nature of Midwesterners. I’ve watched the skyline here transform over the years and have formed relationships that I’ll take through the remainder of my life. But I also feel like the world no longer revolves around physical location and that creates all kinds of new dynamics. I won’t miss the harsh winters I’ve endured over the past 20 plus years and am ready to move into new seasons both literal and figurative. 

The past year-plus has been nothing short of life-changing for me. Not only did my career trajectory transform in an instant—but I still remember vividly sweating through the delirium of a 102 degree Covid induced fever as 24-hour news networks covered the insanity at the Capitol building. This, only months after a summer of civil unrest as I navigated my early days of career reinvention. It felt like living through an alternate reality and I look at the world differently as a result. 

It’s cliche to say that these times are unprecedented, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’ve been blessed to have super interesting opportunities working with smart and talented people in both the autonomous EV and contingent workforce management space. These are two fields that are literally defining the future of transport, urban centers and work itself. I’m once again working on the front lines of transformation and that “T” word has never been more relevant. 

So, the next chapter begins in San Antonio. I’ll see you there, (or at SXSW :-)

Why Employee Experience Is The New Customer Experience

Article originally posted on Forbes

In the early days of my career, the business world had just begun to embrace the notion of “Customer Experience” along with the initial iterations of e-commerce and e-everything. Consumer expectations were changing with technological advances, and new(ish) field emerged: “CX,” shorthand for Customer Experience. Countless books document the topic, and scores of companies have worked tirelessly to put the customer at the center of everything they do. For a company today, to be described as a “customer-obsessed company” is the ultimate badge of honor. However, in a post-pandemic world, it won’t just be the customer experience that dictates the success or failure of a company — but the increasing importance of the employee experience, one where employee expectations are being drastically re-shaped by multiple forces. “EX” or Employee Experience, will become as important as “CX” as the relationship between employer and employee is re-defined across a handful of key areas.

The Flexible Employee Experience

A survey done as part of Linked In’s Workforce Confidence Index finds that 50 percent of employees polled place hours/location flexibility as the top priority as an employee, exceeding things like salary, work-life balance, and culture. And of these respondents, it is millennials who value flexibility most, exceeding the generational average by five percent. Emily He, SVP at Oracle Cloud, asserts that flexibility, including remote options, can be a way to retain and attract top talent. “One of the biggest things to remember as we approach “post-pandemic stability” is that the last year proved that remote work, works. It was not easy at first, and we could all use a break from Zoom meetings, but the basic assumptions that we need central offices in core industrial regions can be safely dismissed. That opens up huge opportunities for how companies can recruit and treat top talent.”

Source: Linked In Workforce Confidence Index

If flexibility has become the most sought-after work benefit, employers seeking to entice employees back to the office are going to have their work cut out for them. Yet, some appear eager to push for a return to the office. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s Chairman, and CEO has already told his U.S. employees they should begin getting used to returning this month to have 50% of workers rotating through offices by July. While not overtly ruling out some flexibility, Dimon exclaimed, “I’m about to cancel all my Zoom meetings…I’m done with it.” WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani went even further, claiming (without data) that employees who work from home are less engaged: “Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home.” Despite some executive sentiment however, the flexible or hybrid employee experience, is likely to gain steam as employers and employees bargain and set their terms on what is and what is not acceptable.

The Wellness Focused Employee Experience

Overall wellness, including mental health, has also emerged as a critical factor when evaluating the employee experience. Oracle’s Emily He relates this to the pandemic: “This increased stress and anxiety of COVID-19 has negatively impacted the mental health of 78 percent of the global workforce according to our annual latest study. The pandemic tore down many of the boundaries people put up between work and their personal lives. But it is not just because of the pandemic that mental health and wellness are becoming a greater focus for employees.” Indeed, it has become standard practice for many companies to encourage “mental health days” as a way for employees to re-charge while chipping away at the historical stigma of mental well-being.

The Socially Conscious Employee Experience

What happens when employees lean into social impact issues? Over the past few years, we’ve seen the emergence of political polarization, a politicized pandemic, and movements such as BLM and #MeToo take hold of public discourse. This dynamic is seeping into the workforce as manifested by employee walkouts in big tech in response to employer policies/actions, or as illustrated recently, the departures of roughly one-third of the employees of Basecamp, a small tech company divided over internal discourse of societal issues. It is DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts that are fast becoming the modern catalyst for organizational change. In California, The Silence No More Act is poised to be accepted or rejected by Governor Gavin Newsom. The roots of the proposed legislation are tied to a former Pinterest employee who violated NDA terms to speak publicly about her negative experiences as a woman of color with the company. Cheryl Kerrigan, Chief People Officer at Toronto based network company, BlueCat emphasizes the connection between DEI and difficult conversations “This is about having real and sometimes uncomfortable conversations across the organization and helping people to challenge stereotypes and examine the bias that we all may unconsciously bring. The more we educate and hold ourselves accountable, the better we become as an organization.”

The Engaged Employee Experience

It’s no secret that the level of engagement of an employee is connected to their prosperity at a company. HR platforms such as Peakon are designed to evaluate how employees feel about their jobs, work, culture, leadership, etc. Duncan Welling, A digital transformation expert, makes the connection between the heightened expectations employees now have of the technology they use at work: “The implementation of technology to support employee experience has lagged significantly behind customer experience. Before the pandemic, employees were largely willing to roll their eyes and complain to co-workers about a bad experience accessing an internal system. But, with offices closed, these systems have become the only point of contact, and a consistently bad experience may cause valuable employees to go looking for new jobs.”

A decrease in an employee’s overall engagement could be a sign they are looking elsewhere, and with an economic recovery in progress — this could prove to be disastrous for companies. One study suggests that a “Turnover Tsunami” is coming. Research commissioned by the Achievers Workforce Institute found that 52 percent are looking for a new job, up from 35 percent a year earlier. The study also found that 46 percent of respondents feel less connected to their company, and 42 percent say company culture has diminished since the start of the pandemic. Just 21 percent said they are very engaged at work.

Should The Employee Experience Feel Like Family?

In a recent memo to employees, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke issued a clear statement that his company’s employees shouldn’t view themselves as members of a family: “Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family. The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can’t un-family you.” Instead, Lütke proposes employees view themselves as part of a cohesive team, dedicated to a shared mission. Regardless of metaphor, today’s employees are searching for meaning, purpose and deep connection to their career given the amount of time and energy they invest in it. Brian Rainey, CEO of Gooten, a product fulfillment company stresses the importance of a supportive environment as core to the employee experience: “What hasn’t changed is what employees look for in a job — a rewarding experience to solve challenging problems in a supportive environment. Culture, benefits, a forward-thinking management team, and job satisfaction: none of these are new. What’s changing is the ability, speed, and number of opportunities that the best employees have if they aren’t satisfied with their current position.”

Whether it be team, family or simply an organization that supports its employees, it’s becoming clear that employee expectations from the companies that employees seek employment from are changing, and they have more say in the value (and values) that comes with being employed at a company. As the economy recovers and work takes on a variety of shapes — the employee experience will matter more than ever.

The Mentor / Mentee Value Exchange

Originally posted on David by Design

For the past five years or so, I have been informally mentoring people. I’m happy to report that some of the earliest are ridiculously successful and I still keep in touch. I’m also a mentee to a few people I look up to. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Understand Your Motivation Before You Become A Mentor or Mentee

You’re entering an informal agreement and you should know what’s motivating you and clearly articulate that to the other person. In my case, I realized I had not been seeking out mentors so becoming one was an intentional act.

Embrace That It’s A Two Way Learning Street

Regardless if you decide to seek or provide mentorship, you are accepting the role of both teacher and student. As a mentee you will be teaching your mentor on a daily basis. Understand this dynamic works both ways.

Be A Mentor Means Being An Active Listener

If you want to become a valuable mentor, you either are a serious active listener or want to get better at it. Don’t become a mentor if you don’t value listening. It’s the number one requirement.

Being A Mentee Means Being You

If you’re not comfortable being yourself, you may not be ready for mentorship. Being a mentee means bringing your true self to the informal arrangement. There’s no room for anything less.

The Mentor/Mentee Value Exchange Transcends Professional Development

Being professional is a core value of my being. I strive to act ethically. I’m also a follower of radical candor and encourage mentees to explore a degree of personal life as part of professional development.

Trust Is The Literal Foundation Of Mentor/Mentee relationships

In every engagement where I have been both mentee as well as mentor, I seek to build trust. It’s the bedrock of the Mentor/Mentee value exchange. And it also flows both ways.

Don’t Become A Mentor or Mentee If You Can’t Make The Time

Time is our most precious asset and it’s limited. We have demanding projects, family duties, self care, etc. all competing for time. If you can’t prioritize being either, you aren’t ready for it.

The Mentor/Mentee Value Exchange Is A Human Investment

In the age of crypto and a red hot housing market — becoming a mentee or mentor is an investment in another human being. If you value the ROI that comes with human investment, you’ll benefit from being either.

Emerging Data Suggests Remote Employees Are Less Engaged

Originally published on Forbes

It was approximately a month ago that WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani sparked a backlash by stating confidently, “only the least engaged employees want to continue working from home.” The news cycle was relentless in pointing out that Mathrani’s comments were insensitive or inaccurate. I even pointed out in my recent column, that Mathrani had no data to back up his claim. However, a new, yet to be published study contains a surprising data point that backs up (at least partially) Mathrani’s claim. According to the study, remote employees do in fact feel less engaged.

The study is being done by audience engagement technology company, Emotive Technologies which conducted the behavioral-based in-depth survey of 395 workers at two time points, measuring both what drives their engagement and their current level of work engagement. The study is being conducted using the APEX scoring system which is backed by academic institutions including Harvard, Columbia, and UC Berkeley and includes a mix of gender and ethnicities while focusing on an average salary of $56,863.17 and an average age of 38.51 years. The study was conducted from April-May 2021 as some employees continue to work from home and others started returning to some form of office work or hybrid combination.

A Feeling Of “Time Scarcity” May Be The Reason Remote Workers Feel Less Engaged

According to the study, employees who reported that they primarily work remotely expressed feeling nearly two times or 182% less engaged than workers who reported that they primarily work in person. Analysis of the study reveals that experiencing a feeling of ‘time scarcity” has something to do with the lower level of engagement of remote workers when compared to their in-person peers. Many workers deal with feelings of not having enough time in the day to complete tasks but it is remote workers who show a 49% increase of non-engagement that is connected to grappling with feelings around time scarcity. Dr. Nick Hobson, PHD and Chief Scientist at Emotive who specializes in behavioral science and is leading the study ponders the implications: “more than ever before, it is critical that organizations and leaders understand and positively impact their employees’ well being and productivity…so too are workplace leaders and HR execs beginning to ask the “why” of the employee experience. Why are certain employees less engaged? Why is the risk of burnout at an all-time high? Why are we seeing people leave their high-paying jobs? Where do meaning and purpose fit into the employee lifecycle?” As the study suggests, working remotely does not guarantee employees will feel more engaged — perhaps just the opposite. And to make matters even more complex, a separate poll conducted by morning consult shows that the majority of employees they spoke to feel that their productivity while working from home is largely the same (with the notable exception of Mexico) with lesser percentages of employees reporting they were either more or less productive when compared to in-person work (only 20% of U.S. workers reported more productivity).

When It Comes To Engagement, “Fit” Trumps Remote Work And Pay

Some employees are telling employers that they want to work remotely above all else and employers are wrestling with the idea. While a handful of Apple employees circulated a memo pushing back on return to office policies, Facebook, in contrast, announced that all employees who want to work remotely would be permitted to do so. Facebook’s gesture may be designed to maximize talent retention as some employees express they would rather quit than return to the commute and office life. Recent reports suggest that up to 40% of employees are considering switching jobs, prompting the “Great Resignation.” Emotive’s study suggests that there is a retention factor that transcends the debate between remote and office work — it is the feeling of “fit” and the belief that one’s values and personality match the values and personality of the organization they are employed with. Emotive’s Dr. Hobson elaborates: “We found that one driver — by far — explaining how employee engagement develops is the perception of “fit” with the organization. Employees who scored in the top half of fit were 209% more engaged than employees who scored in the bottom half of fit” In fact, the aforementioned study suggests that fit is 674 times more effective in increasing employment than paying employees more money. Dr. Hobson adds: “trying to increase employee engagement with money alone would be a difficult (and very expensive) endeavor compared to leading change to foster higher levels of fit”.

What About The Total Workforce?

So while remote work is no guarantee for employee engagement, and “fit” may be the ultimate predictor of engagement (and possibly retention) — what does this mean for “other” kinds of employees who may be contingent, contractors, freelancers, or part-time? According to Kevin Akeroyd, CEO at PRO Unlimited, a modern workforce management solutions provider, by the third quarter of 2020, they saw contingent work increase by 9% over pre-Covid levels. By the end of the first quarter in 2021, that figure rose to 15% above pre-Covid levels. Kevin underscores the notion of taking a “total talent” view of the workforce, including contingent/contract employees or those that are not part of the full-time employee headcount: “Traditional approaches to employee experience and employer brand building that fail to look beyond full-time employees to contingent, contractor and freelancers risk missing the single biggest moment in talent transformation of the past decade. Creating engagement of your total talent pool, regardless of location or employment status has never been more important for building growth and optimizing cost in the modern enterprise.” At this point, it’s unclear how engagement levels could influence non-full-time employees, but it’s worth noting that this considerable group is also part of the total workforce which isn’t reflected in the study.

Previous surveys such LinkedIn’s US Work Confidence index indicated that work flexibility (including remote options) was the number one priority for the employees they polled. But Emotive Technologies’ study, with a focus on behavioral science, may unearth some deeper truths about what it means to have truly engaged employees. Whether they work remotely or not — employees want above all else, to feel a sense of belonging, purpose, and fit when it comes to working for a company. Ideally, it’s one that reflects their own personal values and beliefs.